Blueprint for Spooling Up

Guest post by Paul T. Martin

This is a no frills blog post – here’s a list of equipment, skills and mindset you and your family needs right now.  Share this.  It’s a blueprint; it’s not set in stone.  Modify it to fit your situation.

Essential Equipment

Everyday Carry (EDC) Equipment.  This varies from person to person, but it generally involves a choice of handgun, a flashlight, a knife, OC spray and an individual first aid kit (IFAK).  Carry as many of these components with you as often as you can.

Get Home Bag.  Don’t get too worked up on this.  Simple GHBs work fine.  Read the article I just linked.  Get an inexpensive backpack; one that your kid is no longer using for school will work just fine.  Put that stuff in the backpack.

Food.  You need 35,000 calories and 700 grams of protein per person to endure a 2 week emergency.  Don’t be one of these “prepared” citizens who says “I’m good on food.”  Take a piece of paper or spreadsheet and add up the calories and protein in your emergency food supplies; you don’t know how much you really have until you do the math.

The numbers above assume an intake of 2,500 calories and 50 grams of protein a day.  Those numbers will give you a little cushion in case you need to go a little longer than 2 weeks or have an additional person you need to provision during that timeframe.  Again – I cannot stress this enough – until you’ve counted calories and grams of protein, you have no idea how much food you really have.  I have our entire food supply on a spreadsheet.  I walk the walk.

Water.  You need 45 gallons per person for a two week emergency.  That’s water for hydration, sanitation and cooking.  Budget an extra gallon a day for each pet in your care.  This “one gallon a day per person” is nonsense.  You will be miserable.  Keep some at work, in your vehicle, and at home.  Blue water containers are best.  Two liter soda bottles are also fair game in a pinch.

Firearms.  Read this.  Get training without delay.

Civil unrest kit.  I keep one in my truck.  This is for the situation where you inadvertently (because you shouldn’t be seeking out opportunities to go to riots) find yourself in a civil unrest situation.  In addition to extra IFAK supplies, I carry heavy duty eye goggles (such as these), respirator with P100 cartridges, and mechanic’s gloves.  I use the respirator and P100 cartridges regularly when I am working with strong bathroom cleaners in confined spaces.  It works really well.

OTC meds and prescription meds.  My guidance on these is here.

Extra contact lenses and solution.  You can buy more than a year’s worth of lenses at a time.  I generally buy 2 years’ worth when I do.  When the next supply chain snafu hits, you don’t want to be without lenses.  I also have a pair of eye glasses with ANSI rated lenses as a back up.

Toilet paper, paper towels and hygiene products.  This is self explanatory.  Figure out what you need.  Stock up.

Lighting and emergency power.  Read this.  You likely won’t buy all of this at once.  Prioritize.  Budget.  Do what you can.

AM/FM radio.  Get a couple of these with some alkaline batteries for them.  You don’t need one with all the bells and whistles.  A simple transistor radio is what we’re talking about.  Phenomenal tool for getting news and information that doesn’t require your modem or router to work.  This radio is currently 53% off right now as of this post.  I own one and highly recommend it.  (By the way – shortwave radio is useless.  I only use this radio for AM/FM reception.)

Cold weather supplies in your car.  It’s turning cooler in the U.S.  Be ready to shelter in your vehicle due to a freak winter weather event or other crisis.

Essential Skills

Know the down and distance.  It’s fall so I get to use football terms.  Rely on trustworthy sources of news.  Most of the nonsense you are reading on Twitter is just that – nonsense.  You’re reading it because it confirms your biases.  Start here.  Knowing what’s going on – the down and distance – will help you make better decisions.

Know first aid, CPR and Stop the Bleed.  I’ve said that dozens of times in this blog over the last 40 months.  Help won’t be there as soon as you need it.

Gun safety and self defense decision making.  Invariably, people rush out and buy guns and ammo when the news feed gets flooded with fearful images and reports.  It’s not enough to buy a gun and some ammo.  You must learn to use it safely and legally.

Know how to manage your home for an extended utility outage.  What do you need to do in the event of a multi-day power or water outage?  How do you manage the freezer and refrigerator?  How do you keep essential items powered up?  How do you get news and information?  Knowing a plan to do these things will greatly enhance your quality of life in an extended utility outage.

Essential Mindset

You are going to get through this.  The steps you take now will help you with that.  Your spouse and children are relying on you.  Decide now to adopt a survivor’s mindset to help you push through whatever may be coming in the months ahead.

Be ready to help others.  This is how you “win” at preparedness – by being the person whom everyone sees as a leader.  You must balance between helping others and draining resources to the “I’m Coming To Your House” crowd (I provide guidance on dealing with them here.)  Decide now how you plan to help others – and what you cannot do to help others.  Here’s my suggested action plan for that.

Preparing means taking action is a priority.  Don’t just read about preparedness.  Start doing preparedness.  Here’s a great starting point for you.  Read and do this without delay.  Take serious action this week!

Find what motivates you and use that to help you push through.  It could be your faith, your family, or your desire to see your friends again.  What would motivate you to toughen up and take action to prepare?  Ask yourself that question.  Identify your motivators.  Keep them in mind when hard times hit.

Final Thoughts

In the days ahead, you will likely get more emails, calls and texts from people asking you what they should be doing to get better prepared.  Feel free to send them this list.  Edit it if you’d like.  Put it on your own words.  Again – this is a blueprint.  Customize it to fit your personality and situation.  I’m sharing this with you with the hopes it will make your life easier when you get those inevitable calls for help and guidance.

One final time for those hard of hearing: We all must start doing preparedness.

This is the email I shared with attendees of last month’s preparedness conference after the event.  I hope this helps you understand what needs to be done right now:

In the weeks ahead, as you process what we discussed, keep a few things in mind:

You have a green light to make mistakes and break things.   If you are not making mistakes and breaking things, it likely means you aren’t pushing hard enough.  Take calculated risks.  Ask “what if?” and “is it possible?” and “can I?” on a regular basis.

Start doing things you haven’t done before.  I mentioned I had never worked with PEX or a circular saw until this summer.  I’d never built a water filtration system until June.   I had no idea what I was doing.  So I made the effort to teach myself.  You should do the same thing.  Identify something you can’t do well.  Then learn to do it well.

Stop reading about preparedness and start doing preparedness.  There’s a time to read books and watch YouTube videos on preparedness.  Then it’s time to do work.  Do the work.  Do the work.

Winter is coming.  Use the change of seasons as an excuse to do preventative maintenance and cleaning.  Test your systems.  Check your gear.

Don’t wait on Paul to do something, build something, or tell you something.  Don’t wait on me to update something or improve something.  I’m not waiting on anyone to do those things for me.  Neither should you.  

Identify what’s holding you back and eliminate that barrier.  Do what it takes.  Take some vacation days to work on preparedness projects.  Skip a tailgate and ballgame to free up the time.  Sell some of that stuff in your garage and closets you don’t need any more and use those funds to get better prepared.  That conference you just attended didn’t materialize out of thin air.  It took a lot of time to formulate – which I was happy to do.  But I had the time because I made the time – I didn’t spend my nights and weekends frittering the time away.

Start teaching others what you know.  Friends, neighbors, family and fellow parishioners need your help.  Don’t say “I don’t know what to teach them.”  That is nonsense.  You learned skills this weekend you can teach others.  You already know skills you can teach.  My website is full of ideas.  Take those ideas.  Improve upon them.  Make them better.  Share what you know with others.  I look forward to attending a preparedness conference that one of you puts on.  Nothing would make me happier than just having to show up and learn.

Remember the speech from Coach Kara Lawson: Learn to Handle Hard Better.  This is possibly the best two minutes about preparedness you will watch this year:

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